Jewish tradition connects the five books of
Moses (the Torah) with water.For a
healthy life, our sages say that you cannot go three days without either.Recently there have been many news stories
from Israel on the theme of water – all focusing on the Israeli priority of
saving or benefiting human life.

The main inspiration for this blog was this
summary of the miracle of how the drought-ravished Jewish State
overcame a full-blown water crisis by investing $4 billion between 2002 and
2010 to develop water technology that keeps its population and industries
alive.Israel’s latest desalination
plant, in Sorek, is now at full capacity, producing 627,000 cubic meters of
drinking water daily. With the lowest rate of energy consumption in the world,
its water is the cheapest and most
efficient of any large-scale desalination plant.Israel has exported this knowledge
worldwide.The San Diego desalination
facility uses the reverse osmosis developed by Israel’s IDE Technologies, which
has just opened a new office in the drought-ravished
state of Texas.The Norwegian company,
EnviroNor, is recruiting Israeli expertise to provide the water-processing
technology necessary for its project to convert secondhand oil barges into floating
desalination and wastewater treatment plants.

International interest in Israeli water
technology has encouraged joint research
between the USA’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Israel’s Ben Gurion
University of the Negev.And Sir Mark
Walport - chief scientific adviser to the British Government mentioned the many
Joint
UK-Israeli water science projects being conducted at UK
universities.And the National
Sanitation Foundation International (NSF) has certified the major product lines
of Israel’s Amiad
Water Systems.The NSF evaluated
that the water produced by Amiad’s automatic self-cleaning screen and
microfibre technology is safe for human consumption across the USA and Canada.

Locally, Israeli water technology is
restoring the Besor-Hebron
River flowing through Beer Sheva, which for decades had been polluted
by untreated wastewater from Palestinian Arab towns.Now a 3-year project has been agreed between Israel, the PA and
the Bedouin community to clean up the river. And please read about the water
projects of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and its work with Bedouin
communities, in its response to slanderous accusations in the New York Times.

You may also have missed the news that
Israeli authorities helped
alleviate flooding in Gaza from recent rains by transferring four pumps
from the Palestinian Authority into the Gaza Strip (contrary to a fictitious
report by the AFP news agency that Israel had opened dams).Israel has also doubled its supply of water
to Gaza from 1.3 to 2.6 billion gallons, and was
praised for doing so by visiting inspectors from the European
Union.

There was little international recognition
of the historic agreement signed by Israel and Jordan for the Red Sea-Dead Sea
rescue pipeline project.The $800
million agreement authorizes the construction of a 65 to 80 million cubic meter
capacity desalination plant in Aqaba, Jordan that will
produce fresh water to benefit both nations.Nor much fanfare for Israel’s Water Authority opening of a new
treatment facility for wastewater from the city of Tiberias that will allow
Christian pilgrims to baptize themselves in clean
Jordan River water.

Israel also is involved in countering some
of the dangers associated with water.Cyclone Pam has
devastated the remote islands of Vanuatu, but already a multi-sector emergency
response team from Israel-based IsraAID has arrived and is distributing
drinking water.More Israeli aid teams
are on their way.And should terrorists
try
to sabotage water systems, Jerusalem’s regional water & wastewater
utility, Hagihon, has developed and installed one of the world’s most
sophisticated security systems.

Israeli ingenuity has even developed
medical treatments from water. IceSense3, developed by Israeli biotech IceCure
Medical, uses frozen
water (“cryoablation”) to destroy targeted tumors in less than 15 mins,
with no pain.IceCure has just received
a $21 million injection of funds from Epoch Partner Investments to speed up the
sales and distribution of its IceSense3 system to treat breast cancer.And only Israeli scientists could have
developed a “safe” virus to kill antibiotic resistant bacteria, from the wastewater of Jerusalem’s sewage
system!

Water has also made a major contribution to
Israel’s modern economic success.Israel’s underwater natural gas discoveries are now well known.However, you may not have realized that
Israel’s location between
two major oceans has given it a pivotal trading role in providing China
with outlets to both the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.And who would have thought that Russia would
be importing large quantities of high-quality Israeli sea salt from Israel’s
Salt of the Earth to
make the salt water for tinned tuna and salmon produced in Russia’s
Vladivostok and Korsakov regions.

To conclude we dive beneath the water to
wish a “mazel tov” to the members of the scuba diving club in
Caesarea that discovered the largest trove of gold coins ever found off
Israel's Mediterranean “gold” coast.The Israeli Antiquities Authority said the find of 2000 gold pieces,
dating back more than 1000 years, was "so valuable that it's
priceless".

And finally, even underwater, Israel’s
life-changing scientific ingenuity surfaces - as demonstrated by the laying of
the cornerstone of the new deep-sea
research labs for Haifa’s Mediterranean Sea Research Center.The lab will develop underwater robots,
vehicles, optics, acoustics and propulsion systems.

As
Israel’s political parties fight another election and form alliances in its
aftermath, here are some other perhaps more constructive battles that the
Jewish State has been fighting recently.

The war
against cancer is one that Israel is determined to win and each week brings a
new breakthrough in Israeli treatments.Israel
Technion scientists, with their US allies at MIT and
Harvard have discovered that chemotherapeutics, delivered in tiny silicon
containers with nano-sized holes are able to destroy
malignant tumors, whilst avoiding adverse effects on healthy
tissue.Then chemotherapy developed by
Professor Dan Peer of Tel Aviv University that previously fought
ovarian cancer has now been engineered to target Glioblastoma
multiforme - the most aggressive form of brain
cancer.

Fighting
heart disease
will become much easier now that researchers at
Israel’s Weizmann Institute have revealed that heart disease causes individual
heart filaments to lose synchronization.Replacing diseased cells in a structured manner can re-establish a
regular rhythm. The battle
against brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s will benefit from the
results of the Tel Aviv University research study into how brain neuron
networks preserve memories.Meanwhile
Israeli biotech Kadimastem is winning a war on two fronts with the
recent success in pre-clinical tests of its stem cell treatment for the brain
disease ALS.Kadimastem has also
formed
an alliance with Tel Aviv University’s technology transfer company, to
use the same technology to induce pancreatic cells into producing insulin and attack
diabetes.

In clinical tests, Israeli biotech,
Pluristem, is winning the fight
against radiation sickness. Pluristem’s stem cells enable recovery
from bone marrow failure following total body exposure to high doses of
radiation. And another Israeli biotech Advanced Inhalation Therapies has
received a major support boost in its mission to
beat the effects of cystic fibrosis by being granted Orphan Drug status
from the US FDA for its nitric oxide treatment.But if all you want to do is fight
the flab, you may want to know that Israel’s Tulip Medical has
successfully completed its first clinical trial of its pill that expands in the
stomach, inflates like a balloon, and creates a sense of fullness.

Israel is a major force in the war against
world hunger and thirst.In India,
Israel is well
underway in its campaign to open 30 agricultural centers of excellence for
Indian farmers.And the US Agency for
International Development has just refueled
the funding of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s research into boosting crop
yields.

The Governor of Embu County in Kenya received
an army of Israeli
entrepreneurs who will introduce water technology to revolutionize
agriculture into the arid, yet fertile soils of Embu.And Israel’s TakaDu is saving billions of
liters of water in Australia’s
battle against severe drought with its unique leaks and faults
detection technology.Yet another
Israeli water-tech company, CropX, has just launched its advanced
adaptive sensors and software service that increases crop yields whilst saving
up to 25% of the water and energy used in irrigation.

Israel
goes far beyond the call of duty in the fight to save and restore life.Hundreds of Syrians injured by the fighting
in their civil war have been treated in Israeli hospitals - including a 13-year-old boy who was seriously injured by a mortar in the
Quneitra region three months ago. He has now been fitted with a
prosthetic leg that will allow him to walk again.One battle that Israel will probably lose is
that of welcoming the Queen of England to the holy land; however at least her
grandson Prince
William did meet recently with IsraAID workers who are still in
Japan, helping victims in their long fight to recover from the 2011 earthquake
and tsunami.

My own personal war is against media bias.It is a constant battle to get the
international press to recognize Israeli efforts to win equal opportunities for
all its citizens.To publicize disabled
kids completing the Jerusalem marathon, using Israel-developed Upsee
mobility harnesses and trained by 20 police officers.To acknowledge that the brain-damaged,
autistic
or minorities (e.g. Moslems
or even Catholic
Filipinos) can – if they want to – serve their country in meaningful
and useful ways.To highlight praise
from European Union inspectors of Israel's actions to promote reconstruction
in Gaza and ease the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. And not to ignore
examples of Israeli inclusiveness, such as the press conference featuring the Israeli-Arab
Chairman of Israel’s Election Committee where the only International or English language news reporter
was Sharon from The
Real Jerusalem Streets.

Finally, let’s celebrate the announcement
that this year’s ceremony to mark Israel’s victory in its 1948 War of
Independence will feature 14winning Israelis who have been chosen to light the ceremonial torches
at the Mount Herzl national cemetery in Jerusalem.They include hi-tech developers,
entrepreneurs, Israeli-Arabs, top women achievers and aid workers.Next year we will be joined by thousands of
young French immigrants who want to win the
fight to live as Jews.

Last week the PLO Central Council decided
toend
security co-operation with Israel.So I decided to retrieve from my newsletter archives just a few of the
hundreds of examples of news articles showing Israeli cooperation with
Palestinian Arabs.Here are some of the enormous
benefits received in the past year that Palestinian Arabs will be missing out
on, if their leaders end security co-operation and once again abandon their own people.

Medical

Without security cooperation, it would have
been extremely dangerous for the IDF medical personnel on routine patrol in
Hebron in November to
perform CPR to save an unconscious Palestinian Arab youth with no pulse,
due to having accidentally electrocuted himself.Or the other IDF medics to treat
20 Palestinian Arabs who were injured in April when their mini-bus
crashed into a car.Or to rescue
4 Palestinian Arabs, whose speeding vehicle flipped over and fell into
a wadi in March.And then to evacuate
the severely injured and a two-year-old child by helicopter to hospital.It is highly unlikely that Magen David Adom
and IDF paramedics would be on hand to resuscitate
a six-month-old Palestinian Arab baby after he suffered a heart attack
on the way to Jordan. No more scenes
of delight as on his parents’ faces at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem
hospital.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQvH5Saw5ZA

Without
security cooperation, how could doctors
at Haifa’s Rambam hospital in February deliver
twins to a Gaza woman with a severe blood clot disorder and then deliver
a baby to a Gaza mother in a critical condition due to Rh incompatibility and then
fix the baby’s congenital heart condition?How could surgeons at the same hospital in September perform a
unique kidney transplant on a 14-year-old boy from Gaza?I’m sure that the wife of PA president
Mahmoud Abbas and the mother-in-law and granddaughter of Hamas leader Ismail
Haniya would have complained if their
operations in Israel last year had been cancelled due to lack of
security co-operation.

During
Operation Protective Edge, Israel demonstrated time after time that ordinary Gazans
are not its enemies.During the
fighting, the IDF set up a
field hospital including a delivery room at
the Erez border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip.Those that were prevented by Hamas from
travelling to Israel for treatment were evacuated
by Magen David Adom to Turkey.But
around 100 Gazans were brought for treatment to Israeli hospitals every
month.

Although her hometown Ashdod
was under constant missile attack from Gaza, Irena Nosel, pediatric ICU head
nurse for Israel’s Save A Child’s Heart (SACH), cared for critically
ill Gazan children at Israel’s Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.Whilst the three murdered Israeli teenagers
were still missing, SACH doctors saved
five Palestinian Arab children, plus four-year-old
Muath from Hebron who was born with the same congenital heart disease
that killed two of his brothers previously.Not only did SACH save the brother of

Palestinian Arab anesthesiologist Wafiq
Othman, but they then trained
Wafiq, who subsequently returned home to co-ordinate the training of
Arab doctors.

Without security co-operation, how can Dr.
Yitz Glick, an orthodox Jew from Efrat in Judea, make his weekly
personal house calls to Wadi Nis, providing medical treatment free of
charge to Palestinian Arab patients?How
can the Efrat Emergency Medical Center that Dr Glick founded in 2000, continue
to treat PA residents?Will Israel
continue to comply with PA requests for medical equipment, such as screening tools for
diagnosing the Ebola virus among Arabs entering via Jordan into
PA-controlled towns?Will Jerusalem’s
Hadassah Medical Center physicians continue to perform complex cardiac surgeries
on
Palestinian Arab children and train Palestinian Arab physicians?

Without security co-operation, we will see
an end to the measurable
improvements that Israeli policy has made to Palestinian health and
welfare in terms of higher life expectancy, lower mortality (infant, maternal,
perinatal), better immunization coverage, nutrition etc. etc. etc.Facts that even the
Arab media has been publicizing.

Do you expect Israel to facilitate the
establishment of new industry in Gaza as it did with the new
Coca Cola plant last year?If
you had any doubts, just see what happened to SodaStream
– called by its Palestinian Arab employees as “the greatest company” where “you
wouldn't get treated like this anywhere in the Arab world”.Despite the workers’ cries of “don’t
boycott us”, it closed down thanks to the PA and its crazy BDS
allies.Such a pity, as a survey
conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, funded by the
European Union, showed that Palestinian Arabs who work in Israel or for Israelis
in Judea and Samaria are paid more than double the wage of those employed by
the Palestinian Authority and triple those working in Gaza.

Good
relations

So goodbye to projects like the joint
team to promote community preparedness and emergency response.And the religious Jews of Beitar Illit will
probably stop visiting the nearby Palestinian
Arab town of Husan where they have been shopping and receiving services
from for years (to the benefit of both communities).And who would risk organizing the travel of
hundreds of Palestinian Arab kids to attend Shimon Peres’ Twinned
Peace Soccer Schools which build friendships between Jews and Arabs? Or
joint teams such as the wheelchair basketball
team, comprising disabled athletes aged 15 to 25 from the PA town of
Beit Jala and from Israel’s Ramat Gan.

Here are the links to two video clips of examples
from last year that show Palestinian children getting on extremely well with
IDF soldiers.You may be amazed to see them,
and you won’t see any more once the PA stops security co-operation with Israel.

What
the Arabs Say Themselves

You don’t have to take my word about any of
these facts.The Arab media praises Israel’s
treatment of its Palestinian Arab workers.Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida commended Israeli employers for much higher wages, job
security and other benefits.In Judea
and Samaria 15,000 Palestinian Arabs work side by side with Israelis.

Finally, in a debate on the Al-Jazeera’s
Arabic service, the presenter and a guest question an Assad supporter as to why
the Syrian army, Hezbollah and other Islamic military groups cannot be more
humane like the Israeli army.